It is his profound and varied historical information, which has given Sismondi his deep distrust of nearly all the conclusions of modern political economy, and inspired him with the gloomy presentiments with which he is filled, in regard to the tendency of society under the practical application of its principles. He has fixed his eyes, not on abstract principles, but actual nations, and traced the result, not of theoretical views on the best regulations for society, but of such as have actually been established, and had their tendency tested by the experience of centuries in different ages and countries of the world. He sees with dismay, in the state of society in modern Europe, under the combined influence of free-trade, increasing knowledge, popular institutions, vast wealth, and long-established civilization, a mere repetition, under different names, of those dreadful social evils which corroded the Roman empire, and in the end overturned the vast physical dominion of the legions. He sees in that state of rural society which is nearly extinct in the British islands, and fast wearing out in France, Belgium, and other parts of Europe, where civilization is most advanced, the only solid foundation for general happiness, the only durable bulwark of public morality, the only permanent security for national existence. This state of society is disappearing, and a new condition of men coming on, from causes which seem beyond the power of human control, but the fatal effect of which is as apparent as the sun at noonday. And thence the gloomy views with which he is inspired on the future prospects of Europe, and his profound hostility to the principles of political economy, from which he considers them as having mainly arisen.